May Vlog Challenge

Of all the forces in nature – gravity, magnetic attraction, nuclear fusion – surely one of the strongest is peer pressure. It’s responsible for untold amounts of change – for better and worse. When we talk about peer pressure it is almost always in a negative context: Little Johnny tried LSD because his friends were doing it.

I can think of several times in my life where it’s been true – I did something stupid (not that taking LSD is necessarily stupid) because my friends were doing it. I drove around a driver’s training track at high speed, at night, in the Canadian winter, drunk and slid my car through a snow fence. Heck, one time I even went to church!

But there is a positive side to peer pressure as well, as indicated by what I’m up to for the month of May!

Quite a few of my friends have taken up doing a daily vlog. There’s as many different reasons for doing this as there are people. Some do it to get out of their shell. Some do it to belabour their point of view. Some do it simply because they are exhibitionists. Some do it because they think their story will help others. Some do it because, well, what the hell! Why not?!

For me it started out trivially. But quickly I realised that it’s not simple, and like a lot of ‘not simple’ things it had some benefit.

I’m 10 days in and I can tell you that making a video – even a 2 minute video – every day is not easy. And that’s exactly the point.

I see this now as being similar to James Altucher’s ’10 ideas a day’ thing (which I also try to do). Sure, anybody can write down 5 ideas for something like ‘What should I write a blog post about?’ or ‘What am I grateful for about yesterday?’. But 10 ideas is tough. About idea 6 you start to sweat, and by 10, if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re really stretching.

In the case of the daily video challenge, I struggle to come up with vloggable topics. At first you think it’s going to be easy. You can vlog about creativity, or business or film… but then you turn on the camera and you realise that those are just too big. You’ve got a couple minutes (yes, I could make longer videos by my sub-challenge was to do short videos as my other ones all hit at least 10 minutes). You’re not going to talk about ‘creativity’ in 2 minutes. And people aren’t watching to see you read the dictionary. They want YOUR take on an ASPECT of creativity.

So I am learning to whittle the topics down. Which is great, because the epiphany comes that digging into ‘creativity’ can give me 3 or 4 videos. I can talk about how creativity relates to my business or about different outlets for my creativity or books I’ve read that help my creative process or even play a song on video!

A big mistake that I see some other vloggers making is not being personal. I think when you start out you think you can be sort of a third person voice about things. But, like I said, people are looking for your personality. People connect with people, then through people to ideas. I know that there is a need for privacy, and there are certain things – and people – in my life that I won’t talk about on camera, but the feelings can still come through. I have been sculpted by my life experiences. And the people who are watching me, presumably, are watching because they want to see things filtered through those experiences (whether they are aware of that or not). So I put myself out there, on camera.

I’m an introvert. Talking to people is painful. But vlogging is also helping in that regard. It’s a way for me to open up without having to – yet – look someone in the face. And I’m finding that the more I vlog, and the more subscribers I get, the more interaction I have with people. And the less I get worried about it. So there’s that 😉

Anyway, I hope you’ll watch my videos. I think that some of them offer valuable tips into how I get through life and others are hopefully entertaining, if nothing else.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve tried a daily vlog challenge (note: choose a short month! I’m an idiot and chose May). Or leave a comment if you’ve watch the videos, etc etc. Or comment on YouTube. In short – get in touch!